Question: is it common to a developer to have lots of tasks to do at the same time, so you don't have sure what you need to do first, specially when you have 2 or more urgent projects?

That is one of the things I most hate on managing.

When you have conflicting tasks fighting for the same time, get management to prioritise them or delegate responsibility to another dev if possible for one of the tasks.

If that doesn’t work, pick one and deliver it before moving onto the next one.

Thank you! :) Unfortunately, I cannot do that on my work. Another advantage to be a developer. :)

Whenever I'm in that situation, I'll just poke my pm/team lead to confirm priority and go with whatever he said...

There must be some form of prioritizing. If you don't have, you should have or your company should have. Please reconsider and review.

If you say, you really have none, use a dice. Assign your task 1 to 6. Roll the dice and work. If you have more than 6 tasks at the same time, you shouldn't have or your company shouldn't have. Please reconsider and review.

I have shit loads of tasks usually between 12 to 25 cards always on my Trello boards. I just clear them based on deadline and priority. If I really ended up with shit tasks with ambiguous priorities, I pick the one I like the most and finish it.

All in all, one task at any given time. Multitask is either a myth or a bullshit.

@cursee The main problem here is as I am the project manager, I have to answer people when they need. Then people call me on the phone, then it arrives a quote and we always needs to be fast at quoting. And I need to find a translator ASAP, or I lose a deadline, the no one is avilable.

Atnthis point, you start trying to rush on the localizer, but the quote client start to get angry and complain and I really need to get his quote done. But we also have an internal project and the company owner has no more time on that and they are pinging me. But on this internal task I do have to do production, not just manage, so it takes time.

And I really don't know or have time to think. But I cannot acomplish anything because for every email I send hoping this is fixed, I receive another 2 of that with issues or changes, or implementations to solve.

For me, it's not common, you can't produce a quality job if you don't have a timespan of focus on the only one current issue/feature, imho.

@brunofontes your comment already has your own answers. Hire necessary people.

I'm in a PM/CTO/CEO position for few years already. So I literally know your pain. Check with your subordinates, discuss with your management and look for solutions. Increase manpower, use some technical solution etc.

If you are handling that much and imagine what will happen to business if you need to take long absence for whatever reason?

@cursee yes, you are right. Thanks! :)

Sometimes it is really hard and the stress level is over 9000. :)